This is a transcript from a court case, Sullivan Versus United States, in which Judge James C. Fox openly admits in the court record (page 23 of this PDF) that the 16th Amendment on which the personal income tax is based was never actually ratified.

He then goes on to admit that the government and courts will treat it as if it were ratified, simply because they have gotten away with it for so long!

Webmaster's Commentary:

Today, we are hearing that the Infernal Revenue Service has been targeting political dissidents to a far greater degree than was previously exposed. Going beyond merely delaying tax-exempt status for Tea-Party, Occupy, and conservatives in general, donors to GOP candidates like Mitt Romney have been hit with disproportionate numbers of audits.

All America is now aware that the IRS is acting illegally. After all, such political targeting was an article of impeachment against Richard Nixon. So the time has come to take the discussion to the next level. Is the IRS, clearly acting illegally, itself legal? and the answer is "no", it is not. The Constitution forbids direct non-apportioned taxation of the people. An earlier version of the Income Tax was struck down by the United States Supreme Court on those grounds.

The Federal Reserve (itself a clearly unconstitutional usurpation of the money-creation authority vested in Congress by the Constitution) and the IRS claim that the passage of the 16th Amendment allows an income tax, but there are several problems with that claim. First and foremost, the 16th Amendment failed ratification! The necessary 3/4 of the states did not ratify the Amendment. Requests for proof that this Amendment was actually ratified are ignored. The IRS considers their enforcement actions the only legal reply they are required to make. And judges in tax courts (who are funded from tax revenues) inevitably refuse to examine the issue and simply declare from the bench that the Amendment was ratified, a power and authority not granted to judges under the Constitution.

There is one notable exception to this judicial legerdemain, and that is judge James C. Fox, who stated quite clearly in the court record for Sullivan Vs United States that the 16th Amendment, on examination, failed ratification. Sadly, however, that was not a tax case, and the judge mentioned the non-ratification of the 16th Amendment as justification for the enforcement of laws that may not have legally been passed, but were presumed valid through long use (i.e. we got away with it this long, so why should we change it now).

Yet another problem with the 16th Amendment is the United States Supreme Court, which ruled in Stanton vs Baltic Mining that the 16th Amendment, even if ratified, did not actually grant any new tax authority to the US Government. For one thing the original Constitutional prohibition against a direct non-apportioned tax is still in effect because it was not explicitly repealed by the hastily-contrived 16th Amendment.

So here we are, with the IRS clearly breaking the law, acting illegally, for all America to see, which is why this is a great time for activists to take the public discussion to the next level and ask if the IRS itself, and its master, the Federal Reserve, are actually legal under the Constitution.